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Comment by neilalexander | Hacker News Reader

In other words, "stay where you are for now, we promise to extend the legislation to cover you in the future".

Did you actually read the article. Ofcom used a "novel reading of the law" to exempt Wikipedia.

The law it seems already covers Wikipedia. Ofcom are choosing not to enforce. I interpret the watchlist comments as ofcom setting up a defensible position for themselves.

Yes the law is probably wrong to include Wikipedia, but the enforcers of the law seem to have common sense. Which overall seems to be a win.

Considering wikimedia hosts what most people would consider porn (randomly came across a video of a couple going at it once) without any ability to filter it from the rest of the content/hide by default, it's not that surprising they are covered, I'm more surprised ofcom relented.

Just because there's a video of sexual acts doesn't mean Wikimedia exists for the prurient interest. It's not like Wikimedia is hosting a clip from "Backdoor Sluts 5", it's really just video of sex in the academic sense. Does a young child need to watch it? No, but I also don't think it should it should be censored. A teenager below the age of majority may benefit from seeing what sex actually is. So often a teenager's first visual experience with sex is from unrealistic porn. I'm not saying a realistic depiction of sex should be included in every sex ed classroom lesson but it should be freely available.

Actually, Wikimedia Commons has a category for pornographic videos.

>Just because there's a video of sexual acts doesn't mean Wikimedia exists for the prurient interest.

nice goalpost move. just because wikimedia doesn't exist solely for the prurient interest doesn't mean that it should therefore provide pornography to children in places that have made that illegal.

And just because you tilt the table toward providing pornography to children doesn't mean I should be downvoted for honest debate.

I did read the article, yes, and it is clear to me that this is a bug, not a feature. Ofcom were suddenly able to find a "novel reading" when directed to do so by a court as a means to temporarily make the problem go away and to avoid having to weaken the legislation.

They know full well that if a successful legal challenge forced them to weaken parts of the OSA by removing service categories from scope, that they'd effectively open the floodgates to more challenges over other categories. The government and Ofcom don't want their precious work ripped up and the courts seemingly don't want to be responsible for doing so.

Whatever loophole they've found, it is practically a certainty that it will be addressed in the future.

The UK has "parliamentary supremacy" which means legislation passed by the parliament overrules everything else. If the court determines the legislation has a problem, it goes back to parliament to make sure parliament intended a certain interpretation, but parliament can either change the law, or they can say the court is wrong and the law stands.

> or they can say the court is wrong and the law stands

Surely the way that parliament says the court is wrong is to re-legislate. They can't just have a vote and say "that interpretation is wrong" if, for example, the Supreme Court rejects their interpretation.

I don't know the exact process but I don't see why they couldn't do that. Parliamentary supremacy means that Parliament is supreme. What they say, goes. It's a dictatorship of elected MPs, hopefully kept in check by the need to be elected.

They can't do that because it would make a mockery of the legal system. Parliament does outrank the Supreme Court, but they do that by passing legislation, not just having a vote and going "no, sorry, lol". The whole legal system is built on precedent, which is incompatible with parliament overriding it piecemeal.

Technically, according to the framework under which it governs itself, Parliament could pass almost any bill, including things like bills of attainder that are panned globally as violating basic freedoms (for good reason). It just “chooses not to” (or rather is restrained by increasingly lax public oversight).

Ofcom's interpretation and enforcement of a law is not immune from judicial review, however. The courts can rule that Ofcom misinterpreted the law or acted outwith their remit or didn't have the necessary legal foundation for a decision. At which point Parliament have to consider whether or not to revise the law or whether to leave their primary enforcer with their hands tied.

That's (mostly) true for "primary legislation" (Acts of Parliament) but "secondary legislation" (regulations, orders, rules and so on) can be challenged and potentially overturned/similar in the courts. This partly reflects the fact that secondary legislation usually receives significantly less parliamentary scrutiny (and in some cases none at all). The legal challenge which Wikimedia brought here was to secondary legislation - regulations made under the OSA by Ofcom - not to the OSA itself.

The verdict was based on the Ofcom regulations, not the Parliament act though.

> Ofcom were suddenly able to find a "novel reading" when directed to do so

You have discovered politics

No actually, it's not a "win" if everything is formally illegal, and everyone lives in fear that if they don't keep appeasing the faceless unaccountable bureaucrat, they will be prosecuted tomorrow.

"For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law."

Could someone seek a private prosecution to make a mockery of the law?

I'm guessing they won't do it because it will finally wake the public up to all of this, I.e. bad press + scrutiny. The law should be applied equally to all, it shouldn't be a popularity contest.

and if it is a popularity contest, mystifying that wikpedia would qualify, it has many serious flaws (generally of the form that a small number of zealots can control the messaging on topics they are obsessed with where most people just want information and are unaware that there are people who don't share their enthusiasm for truth)

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